I am Not a Thief. Lichtenstein was.

At work, we recently ran a series of advertisements in various trade rags. The latest ad was published last week in the one magazine that doesn’t deal with the military, so it needed its own artwork (read: no dudes in camo). I decided that I wanted it to look like it came from one of those pulpy-paper comic books… y’know… because nobody in our industry publishes full-page ads with any comic-inspired elements.

By going comic-booky (only the portion of the ad that’s relevant to this post), I figured it’d at least make people do a double-take. At best, it could come off as quirky, interesting, tongue-in-cheek and worth a read… even if it included a wholly unexciting photo of our (awesomely capable) hardware, replete with a software screenshot (not shown).

Last week, The Foof mentioned to another co-worker that my artwork looked “Lichtenstein-y”.

Cut to today, when I saw a MeFi link to an artist who built a meat-space, pixelated “image” comprising “2788 hand cut, sanded, and painted dowels that when put together form a modern interpretation of a painting by artist Roy Lichtenstein entitled, ‘M-maybe’.”

That immediately reminded me of David Barsalou’s “Deconstructing Roy Lichtenstein” project (warning: large & multiple image downloads) where he demonstrate’s Roy’s bald-faced theft from a number of 60s artists. Barsalou painstakingly tracked down the multiple pieces of work that “inspired” Lichtenstein’s art… including “M-maybe”.